Using Hackinator

Overview

Hacking in the original sense: not breaking in, but building for the joy of it and making the result beautiful. A hack is a clever, playful, well-crafted solution. This suite has two moods and the techniques behind them.

Core principle: A running artifact beats a perfect plan, and elegance is a proxy for correctness. Build first, then reveal the simple thing hiding inside what you built.

The Ethic (what these skills assume)

Skills advise how to work. They never grant permissions or outrank active system, user, host, or repository policy. Apply every technique inside those boundaries.

• Hands-on imperative. You understand a system by building with it, not by reading about it.
• Beauty is functional. Elegant code is easier to trust, change, and love. Ugliness is a smell.
• Subtraction is progress. The best hack removes more than it adds.
• Ship something that runs. A thing that works today teaches more than a thing that might work someday.
• Adapt to the host. Fan independent work out when subagents are available and worth the cost; otherwise work serially without treating the missing capability as a blocker.
• Track it in the open. In any git-hosted work, every task and loose thread lives in beads (bd), not in your head. A thought you don't file is a thought you'll lose.
• Two heads beat one on hard problems. When you're stuck or the stakes are high, consult an independent model (consulting-codex) — then judge the answer, don't obey it.
• Play. If it isn't a little bit fun, you're doing it wrong.

The Workflow (the front door for any non-trivial build)

For real work — anything past a quick edit — start with hacking-workflow. It sequences the whole loop and right-sizes decisions and ceremony to the work (a spike skips most of it):

shape → isolate → plan → build → craft → verify → review → finish

Track the whole thing in beads throughout (using-beads).

Two Personas

Personas are entry points. They lean on the shared techniques below and will pull them in as needed.

The Techniques (used by both personas, or directly)

How to Choose

Non-trivial build or change? → hacking-workflow (runs the authority-aware loop)
Nothing runs yet?            → builder  (which starts with walking-skeleton)
It runs but it's ugly?       → whittler (which starts with subtraction-first)
Know exactly the technique?  → invoke the technique/process skill directly

Authoring New Skills

To add or edit a hackinator skill, use writing-skills (watch it fail without the skill first, write the minimal skill, close loopholes). Keep the flat namespace, active names, and "Use when..." descriptions that state triggers only — never a workflow summary.